We ran into Teddy Blowshardly outside the bar where he gave off the immediate perfume of beer and tobacco. We hadn’t seen him since his old band, Power Sander played The Continental. We were just going to nod and walk by when he offered up a pack of Dunhill Red cigarettes and we each took one even though we’d both quit smoking. Teddy had never been a generous sort and it seemed we should grab it while the grabbing was good. We lit up and stood there in a triangle when Teddy went off on a lecture about the inequity of the bass.
The cigarette tasted good and I looked over at Treadwell and he looked at me and Teddy went off on how the bass contained the melody and the rhythm of a song and could act as a bridge to both. He was saying something about chords and notes and that if you played a different root note in bass it chould change the whole sound of a chord…. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but Treadwell told me later that it was all very basic stuff. Teddy tried to draw in the air a magical line between Mingus and McCartney and Jaco Pastorius… something about harmonics and the pop song and he said, “The joke is that the bass is the most important instrument and most schlubs can’t even hear it. Fuckin’singer gets all the attention.”
He went on talking about aspects of the bass and unsung bass players untill the cigarettes ran out. He offered to buy us a beer inside, but we told him we had to get going… neither of us wanted to hear more about the bass.
“Geez he’s gained weight,” Treadwell said.
“Yeah, he’s really hit bottom, ” I said.
“Ha ha,” Treadwell said. “I thought he played piano?”
“And sings a little,” I said.